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Review: Mirror’s Edge (Xbox 360)

When I heard about this game coming out a while ago it kind of made a fire inside of me. I love free running, if I could do anything in the world without the training, it would be either become a Super Saiyan or a free runner. That’s why I was excited. Free Running, or parkour, is an underground sport that a lot of people overlook. Running from building to building would give me the thrill I need to wake up in the morning, instead I just write reviews for Zac. Dice, who are actually well known in the gaming community as the developers of the Battlefield series, decided to break away from the norm and put everything on the line.

Story:

Mirror’s Edge is set in a city that is heavily monitored by the government. The cut scenes are presented in a sort of comic style cartoon for some type of tone or something. Our protagonist, a girl named Faith, is one of the runners who send messages back and forth on building tops to people who don’t want the information to be read by the “higher ups”. The story, which is rather brief and rushed, starts off with Faith becoming a runner again and you go to some training grounds. After that you have to send a package to someone and the police, or “the blues”, get a little bit nastier than normal. You go back to your superior, Merc, who tries to find out what’s going on and then you find out something is happening with your sister. You meet up with her at a government official’s office, who has been murdered and all evidence leads to Kate (sister). Then most of the story is finding a couple people for information and making it to certain places to get away from the blues.

Gameplay:

This is probably one of the most innovative games I have seen in a while. I have never been actually in a game as much as this one. With the hand and foot animations and the movement of the screen you seem to actually become Faith as she runs from building to building. You can get a sense of vertigo when you fall off a building or get hit by a train and shiver from it. The controls work very nicely with the game. The left bumper controls all up actions and the left trigger controls all down actions. Very simplistic and probably what saves the game from what could have been a disaster. The second half of the game focuses a lot more on enemies than the first and the only problem with this is the combat is terrible. The shooting system sucks and the guns that cops the are carrying only seem to have about 20 bullets in them no matter what gun you use. Not only that but it’s hard as hell to aim, so use your ammo sparingly. Once you get shot about 3 times its game over and that might be a bit more realistic but its also a bit more annoying. The game has a large amount of retries written all over it as well. I would have thought that the shooting system to be a little better considering Dice is known for its shooting games. I do have to say there are a lot of conveniently placed objects in this game to get around…

Graphics:

I am going to say in my opinion that Mirror’s Edge has the best graphics style I have seen all year. Until Prince of Persia comes out. But it has the most “real” presentation to it. That’s just me. The buildings aren’t extremely detailed but they look real. The color also adds to the mood of the game. The monochromatic art style that the game employs is awesome and the further you get into it, you see even weirder mix of colors added onto buildings in strange patterns.

Final Words:

Rent it. Eight hours of gameplay at the most.

Pros

Awesome Free Running gameplay

Graphics style is best I’ve seen in years (IMO)

The noise of hitting the ground after falling

Color

Multiplayer races

I kinda like the music too.

Cons

Terrible combat system

Takes a lot of retries

Short Campaign

Score:

Overall: 7.5/10 (It could have been a lot higher.)Story: 7.0/10 (To short and rushed.)Gameplay: 8.0/10 (Pushed down only by the combat.)Graphics: 9.5/10 (Work of art.)

6 thoughts on “Review: Mirror’s Edge (Xbox 360)”

dude wat the fuk evr xbox is fuckin gay as shit all vidoe games suks after 64 came out now that is the best evrythng els suck my balls as hard as ur mom dose o yah exept Ps2 sony maeks the best of eveything and ply statoin kiks ur asshole

Dude, i totally played this game for the first time the night u reviewed it, thats weird… great minds think alike, lol. but yeah, its a pretty sweet game, the controls are fair, camera control is good, and its very innovative and exciting! not to mention the sound of falling to your death from 50 stories up is something i applaud to hear repetitively!